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China will not engage in an arms race with other countries, Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said on Wednesday, stressing that China's military growth is for defensive purposes.

The remarks were made in response to a recent report from IHS Jane's, a global think tank specializing in security issues, which claimed China's defense budget would double by 2015.

Geng questioned the sources of the figures in the report, and said China's defense budget is set in accordance with national security needs and the nation's economic growth level.

"The development of our military capabilities will not exceed our national security needs or economic capacity, and we will not engage in an arms race with other countries," Geng said at the ministry's monthly news conference.

This report is only one of a number published recently that have played up the "China threat".

Earlier this month, Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies released the China Security Report 2011, which said China is strengthening its military power to be able to stand up to the United States in regional resource development, according to the Global Times.

The report predicted that the South China Sea would be a major focus for China, and that the nation would strengthen its military power to ensure the safety of trade routes and its ability to counterbalance the US military, according to the newspaper.

The flight testing of the first indigenous Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle will be carried out in Russia in 2012, Lenta.ru reports. "We will start the testing of medium UCAV in late 2012", - said Chief of General Staff of Russian Armed Forces, Nikolay Makarov. However he did not specify what UCAV will be tested.

Russian Ministry of Defense has signed contracts with St. Petersburg-based Tranzas Company and Kazan-based development design office OKB Sokol on pilot-plan and research activities in October 2011.

The total value of signed agreements was about 3 billion rubles. It is planned to develop a reconnaissance UAV and UCAV with weight of about 1 ton and 5 tons respectively in the network of these programs.

According to vice-president of Tranzas, Viktor Godunov, his company has signed a strategic partnership agreement with OKB Sokol – the companies will develop both vehicles in cooperation. In particular, Tranzas will develop the guidance systems and airborne electronics for the UAVs, while Sokol will create the UAVs and ground equipment for them. It has been reported that both vehicles will perform the first flight in 2014 and the flight testing will be started in 2015.

India intends to acquire another 71 Russian Mi-17V-5 helicopters, including 12 vehicles for the Ministry of Internal Affairs in addition to 80 ones, which have already been ordered, ARMS-TASS reports.

According to the source close to the Indian Ministry of Defense, negotiations on additional purchase of the helicopters have been conducted earlier. "At present the parties are waiting for the continuation of the negotiations on acquisition of additional batch of Мi-17V-5s, not only for Indian Ministry of Defense, but also for another agencies", - the source added.

Indian air forces have put into operation the first batch of Russian Мi-17V-5 helicopters. The contract on delivery of 80 vehicles of the type is assessed at $1,34 billion and it has been signed in 2008. The helicopters should be delivered by 2014. 21 of them have already been delivered to the customer, six more will be delivered by the end of March 2012.

The deliveries of new-built advanced strike-fighter, the replacement of Su-25SМ, to the Russian air forces will be started in 2020, RIA Novosti reports. It has been reported by the representative of Russian Ministry of Defense, Vladimir Drik.

"The modern requirements for conduct of operations force the aviation designers to look for new means of reacting appropriate reaction to the potential threats. As a result, the concept of advanced strike-fighter has been elaborated. This jet should be delivered to the military units by 2020, replacing Su-25SМs", - he said.

According to him, the new aircraft, developed on the basis of Su-25SМ, will be able to use the whole nomenclature of tactical armament. At the same time it will be developed using stealth technologies. The aircraft will be able to use any runways and it will be equipped with state-of-the-art communication, radar and navigational systems.

The BrahMos missile for the Indian Air Force which can be launched from a Sukhoi-30 is being developed and a test flight will probably be held by the end of this year, said Dr A Sivathanu Pillai, chief controller, R&D, DRDO and chief executive officer and managing director of BrahMos Aerospace. The BrahMos missile used an air breathing scramjet propulsion technology and hence was more fuel efficient than a traditional rocket-powered missile, he said.

Pillai was in Trichy on Saturday to deliver a lecture in the ongoing Pragyan 2012 of the National Institute of Technology, Trichy (NITT). According to him, the paradigm of India's progress must be in the course of a leap frog in technology. "When the world had a cruise missile, India went forward to make a supersonic cruise missile," he said.